Juice up the Dialogue

Poems to Instigate, to Partake, to Terminate

“Shh… We’re here to listen.”

A collective conversation of AGENCY, CONSENT and EMPOWERMENT. From the midst of the Midwest, we ignite a compilation of sex-positive feminine-reverent LGTBQ-friendly poetry. This spoken-word showcase of radical consent is designed to draw people into conversation, to hold safe space for sharing notes on embodied nature & sexy human stardust. Whoever you are, this is your conversation: let this stage be for dialogue & art, unhushed sexuality, and bold self-discovery. Vulnerability of honest exploration welcome, adored, & recommended.

NOTICE OF

WINTER HIATUS

Hello poetic provacateurs,

This Solstice season, the SHH show will take a hiatus of creative hibernation for the remainder of Winter. Jan-Mar shows will be cancelled & we will resume the stage in April at a new location.

This does not mean that Passion Poets is pausing its work or endeavors in the cultivation of artful sexy discourse. We will still be accepting submissions for our upcoming anthology, so please use this time to send your salacious skinsuited scribings to us at [email protected] for consideration. We will be in touch as the work rolls forward toward publication. (And if you have not submitted yet, please send in your work.)

We encourage you to use the Winter months, as mammals are wont to do, to hibernate with your wordworks and incubate the depth of truth-speaking with which you hope to burst forth in the Spring. Nest into your brilliant dripping heart, find out what facets & furrows most want to be shared. Come prepared to call up the fertile waking season with gusto when we recommence!

We're excited to see what this hibernation season draws into being from the quiet truthbearing of the dark. Dig deep, fellow creatures, for what we bring to the rebirth of earth we find in our own breathing skins.

Respect & honor on your creative pathfinding. Power & communion to your naked desires.

We wish you a happy deepwinter dark & clarifying sunreturn!

Love & Choice!
SHH

Event Schedule

Second Sundays @ Seven
$5 cover

Each night will pulse around a central theme,
shared in advance with contributing artists.

2018
Sept 9: Proper Fucking Boundaries
Oct 14: The Art of Asking
Nov 11: Mounting the Mic
Dec 9: The Unsent & Unsaid

Terms of Use

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2019
April 14: Sex Talks To Past Self
May 12: Cathartica
June 9: Earth as Body
July 14: Identity Unmasked

We're About Breaking Barriers

Our Vision

Born and bred in Minnesota with its traditions of taciturn midwestern sensibilities, we recognize the need to cultivate direct & open discourse on sexuality, sensuality, and the radical creation of consent culture. We believe in unsilencing & unshaming sexuality, such that frank communication & empowered exploration become the norm for those navigating the experience of a sexual creature. We aim to develop community that allows us to grow more self-aware, more capable of listening, and more awake to the realities of the flesh.

Our Intent

To hold space for expressing the yearnings of the human heart, such that they are heard, respected, and celebrated.
To honor honest words of the feminine-reverent and sex-forward, male-bodied and mindful, transgendered and transformative, ungendered and unfettered.
To grow a culture of Midwestern Frankness in which sexuality can be spoken about without shrinking, shushing, squirming, or shaming.

Passion Poets Submissions

Use the form below or send an attachment to our email address below

Your Name:

Your Email:

Your Message:

Peter Liptak

Founder, Passion Poets Press & Passion Poets Project

Peter is a blue-eyed ENFP, poet on a writing spree, a carless caffeine-addict, a wide-roaming bicycle fanatic, a publisher, a poet, a father.

Phlo Real

Senior Editor & Co-founder, Passion Poets Project

Phlo Real is an evolutionary instrument, a conversation in process, a dandelion, a pollinator, an experiment of the sentient goddess.

Our Origin Story

Just a year ago, in late 2017, I was sitting, sipping at Troubadour's wine bar amid a multitude of mostly midwestern mentality and a person stepped up to share. The performance was to say the least, transformative. It featured a poem of perilous possibilities. A poem about, and this was something even I was prepared to cringe at as the judgmental-ing began, it was a poem about ‘anal’ (as it were), and as it reached crescendo, the crowd of midwestern minded 30, 40, 50 and 60 year-olds whooped and roared.

My first thought was my daughter, who had just turned the ripe age of one, and how I wanted her (and hopefully a generation of other girls and boys) to hear this (after 18 of course). And so the conversation began; the plan and the purpose; the start of something new: the Passion Poets as an offshoot of Exile Press and slowly, that epic, fearless poet (Phlo Real) and I pushed boundaries together to form this group and this monthly spoken-word event.

OUR POETS

We have a lineup of ~11 poets for each event. Their pics, bios and possibly even a sampling of their work will soon be available at the link below.

You Should Know

OUR GROUNDRULES

This event is all-inclusive: no discrimination against anyone's identities, sensitivities, or proclivities will be tolerated. Safety is an aspect of relationship, and as such we are all responsible for creating the safe space in which our words can be spoken unabashedly & heard fully.

SHH is for humans to be heard as humans. We hold this stage open for honest words. We seek to evolve the conversation on active, engaged consent. Together we co-create an atmosphere of trust in which desires are respected wholly & held tenderly (or very fucking firmly, if preferred.)

In sharing ourselves freely, we invoke that freedom in others. We stir up the soil in which we all grow more intimate with the languages of our own desires, those of others, those of the living earth whose molecules we share.

In the words of our down-home Southern sisterstage, Esoterotica: "We encourage you to shed any shame, explore yourself with words openly and then revel in that exploration and that of others."

Questions? Suggestions? Requests? We care about consent as a verb: these ground rules are a living document. Please email [email protected] and our dedicated team will respond to your query.

GET THE INSIDE SCOOP...

With reminders of upcoming events, news flashes from our fab poets and our burgeoning organization, opportunities for submitting and supporting our efforts.